Researchers create robot that throws up to help
prevent winter vomiting disease

Can a robot be the answer to the winter vomiting
bug?

BY NICOLETTE
EMMINO

Just when you thought there were enough robots
out there doing crazy and unthinkable things, designers invent a
robot that vomits.

Vomiting Larry, a robot that throws up, in
action. (Image via The Health and Safety Laboratory)

“Vomiting Larry,” as the
robot was named, was developed by The Health and Safety Laboratory
(HSL) in England in order to assess the spread of fluid during a
vomiting episode and develop new ways to prevent contamination.

Larry’s creation springs from desire
to reduce the burden of the winter vomiting disease called the
norovirus that so many people contract this time of year.

“As many as a million viruses can be
contained within one milliliter of vomit produced from an infected
individual and research has shown that individuals expel 0.4 to
1.35 liters of fluid during an episode of vomiting,” said
Catherine Makison Booth, Larry’s creator.

How Larry works

Larry is a simple robot and, according to Booth,
not your “typical” one. An authentic mannequin
head is connected to a tube that is supposed to represent a
human’s esophagus. This tube is connected to a closed
cylinder representing Larry’s stomach. His stomach is
filled with fluid that contains fluorescent dye in order to better
indicate projectile spread. Using a piston pump arrangement, the
HSL team manually operates Larry’s vomiting episodes from
a controlled air chamber.

“Upon simulated vomiting, one liter of
fluid splashes and droplets travelled in excess of three meters
from the system, which was much further than anticipated and
highlights just how easily norovirus can contaminate the
environment and therefore pose a risk of infection to
others,” said Booth.

Larry’s future

Using Vomiting Larry, the team can identify how
far vomit droplets can travel and contaminate an environment. Such
findings can lead to improvements in clean-up and disinfection
procedures and help better regulate and control the disease.

“Further experiments would allow us to
identify how long the virus can survive in the environment post
vomiting and which chemicals are best for cleaning and disinfection
of surfaces,” said Booth.

In the future, Larry may travel on airplanes and
ships in order to better understand the virus in semi-closed
environments. The team also wishes to adapt new versions of Larry
and produce robots that cough and sneeze to better understand the
routes of transmission for other infectious diseases.

I guess robots may just be the answer to
long-standing infectious illnesses. ■